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Manitoba History: Manitoba’s Historic One-Room Schoolhousesby Gordon Goldsborough
Chances are, if you are over 60 years of age and grew up in rural Manitoba, you attended a one-room schoolhouse for at least part of your primary education. At one time, such schools were ubiquitous throughout the province. Records kept by the Manitoba Department of Education—which was responsible for ensuring that educational standards were met—indicate that over 2,500 schools existed at one time or another in rural Manitoba. These schools were not merely the site of educational enlightenment. They were typically also the social centres of their communities. Many of them hosted church services, Sunday Schools, dances, picnics, concerts, parties, public meetings, and election polling stations. When rural folk were asked where they lived, many would respond with the name of their school district because it was the only geographic label with which they were familiar. Starting as early as 1905, and gaining momentum through the 1950s and 1960s, rural school consolidation was the death-knell for one-room schoolhouses. When approved by local ratepayers of a school district, the local school would close and its students would be bused to a larger school in an urban centre. Consolidation was made possible by improvements to the provincial road network that made bus transportation of students feasible over much larger distances than had been the case before. Parents worried about their children attending school farther away from home were reassured that consolidation would provide better educational opportunities. Who could say “no” to that? The net result was that the vast majority of the one-room schoolhouses closed during the 1960s. A few continued on in areas where it was not practical to transport students. One of Manitoba’s last one-room schoolhouses—Mason School No. 2149 in the Rural Municipality of Stanley south of Morden—closed in 2002. Some of the now-closed schoolhouses continued as the social centres of their communities. Many were sold to a local citizen and turned into a private residence, church, barn, or granary. Some became museums, preserving the past for their former students who, with age, would become increasingly nostalgic about the “good old days in the little red schoolhouse.” (Those former students probably forgot that many of those old days were not so good as they recalled, and the vast majority of the schoolhouses were not red, if they were painted at all.) A few of the schoolhouses were picked up and moved away from their original sites to a new location, usually nearby but sometimes at great distance. Some were demolished because they were too badly deteriorated or their parts were coveted for new buildings. Most sadly, some former schools were simply abandoned where they stood and slowly fell into ruin. Schoolbooks and papers littered their floors, unplayed pianos went increasingly out of tune, swings and baseball diamonds grew over with vegetation, and windows gave way to the ravages of weather, vandals, and wildlife. When the buildings became so badly degraded that they were perceived as a public hazard, they would finally be torn down or burned, sometimes to be replaced by a monument to remind passersby of their presence, but often to become a forgotten place marked only by a remnant foundation or a few random stones, bricks, or boards. My parents both began teaching careers at one-room schoolhouses so, although I did not attend one myself, I do appreciate their significance in the lives of many Manitobans. Over the past four years, we have tracked down over 1,300 former one-room schoolhouses while mapping historic sites around the province. On the following pages are a few of my personal favourites.
Page revised: 3 April 2020 |
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